Sunday, March 31, 2019

Thursday was a bit bittersweet... after a month on the walls of the Village Gallery I took down the twelve pieces of the Color Wheel exhibition. Sales were sweet. Comments and visits from friends were welcome. The entire experience helped me grow as an artist and gave me much needed encouragement to forge onward.

So what was bitter about it? Putting the work away. Not being able to walk into the gallery and see the colorful display. There's something so special about seeing an entire body of work hanging on a gallery wall. The People's Choice was Orange with Blue, seen on the upper left of the photo below.

My friend Roz Stendahl just posted a fun exercise on Facebook about building a collage around a drawing. See it here. Roz continually comes up with great ideas for drawing and for a collage artist this project is sure a keeper... and one I wanted to share immediately with you. If you try it please send me a jpg and I'll send it onward to Roz.

Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Art usually has a story to tell. You know that, don’t you?
The artist paints, the musician plays or sings, the actor plays a part. The audience listens, watches, appreciates… and
sometimes participates.Communication.

An early morning conversation with some art buddies segued
into the idea of using story-telling as a way of helping the viewer understand
the work whether it’s realistic or non-representational. I’ve noticed during
open studios how the conversation frequently leads to me telling the story behind a
piece that interests a visitor.

Here's a story for you....

HOMEWARD BOUND 12 x 12" NFS

This collage painting is called Homeward Bound and the story around it goes something like this:

"The woman is my mother when she was about 18 and Dad was
falling in love with her.

255 was my phone number!Yes, I’m that old.

The bridge is similar to one
that my father forced me to drive across when I was learning that skill. It had
wooden planks placed wheel width apart and I had to practice keeping the tires
on the planks (or crash into the river below, so I thought). Yikes.

The two men in the rowboat represent my father and brother…
and me. Dad loved for us to go fishing with him; he made us row while he
fished.

The handwriting is from a letter from my dear sister-in-law."

I think that because of this
good story I could have sold this piece several times, but it’s not for sale
for that same reason. It reminds me that my heart will ever be Homeward Bound.

Pull out some of your paintings and see if you can make up a
story about it. The story could be about the content, the images. Or maybe it's about the process of painting it. Maybe the story is pure fiction but fits the painting. It could be the title, a short story.

Write the story, put it in an envelope and tape the envelope to the back
of the painting for a buyer or your heirs to find someday. If it’s headed to a gallery you might make the story part of
the label or contained in the artist statement.We
all love a good story.

So....please tell me a story by leaving it in the comment section below.

Art Tip: Removing acrylic from hands

Use ordinary hand sanitizer to quickly remove acrylic paint and medium from your hands. The alcohol in the sanitizer dissolves the acrylic. Wipe well with a paper towel and then wash with soap and water.

Art Tip: brush cleaning

As I work with acrylic medium for glue or with acrylic paints I stand my brushes in a bucket of water on my work table and give them a soap and water cleanup every day or so. But eventually my brushes get gunky and sometimes I forget to clean them. That's when I clean them with Murphy's Oil Soap. I keep an inch of MOS mixed 1:1 with water in a tall plastic tub (Feta from Costco) and put caked brushes in that solution overnight. By the next day the soap has softened the brush and with a bit of elbow grease I can get the brushes back to useable. This also works for brushes used with oil paint. I gave up using oils but wanted to save those good brushes and Murphy's Oil Soap came to the rescue. Get it at the grocery store.